MOC : [[PHILOSOPHIE]] - [[DÉVELOPPEMENT PERSONNEL]] Aurteur: [[Ken Wilber]] Category: #livre Date : jamais, bruno Recommandé par : [[Bruno Marion]] Notes liées : [[3 GARDEN/Notes/Integral Vision]] et [[Prospérez dans l'incertitude et émergez]] Note : 5/5 *** *Ces notes sont celles de [[Bruno Marion]]* **Habits of nature:** There are even leading-edge thinkers who maintain that what humanity took to be immutable “laws of nature” are actually closer to “habits of nature,” that these “laws” themselves evolved over the years. **Buddhism :** Buddhism is a unique spiritual system in many ways, while also sharing some fundamental similarities with the other Great Wisdom Traditions of humankind. But perhaps one of its most unique features is its understanding, in some schools, that its own system is evolving or developing. **The Three Great Turnings of Buddhism:** This is generally expressed in the notion of the Three Great Turnings of Buddhism, the three major stages of unfolding that Buddhism has undergone, according to Buddhism itself. - The First Turning of the Wheel is Early Buddhism, now generally believed to be represented by the Theravada school and thought to contain the historical Gautama Buddha’s original teachings, which developed in the great Axial period around the sixth century BCE . - The Second Turning of the Wheel, represented by the Madhyamaka school, was founded by the genius philosopher-sage Nagarjuna around the second century CE . - The Third and final (to date) Great Turning of the Wheel, represented by the Yogachara school, originated in the second century CE but had its period of greatest productivity in the fourth century CE with the brothers Asanga and Vasubandhu. **Original Buddhism was founded on such notions as the difference between samsara (the source of suffering) and nirvana (the source of Enlightenment or Awakening); the three marks of samsaric existence; that is dukkha (suffering), anicca (impermanence), and anatta (no-self); and the Four Noble Truths: (1) life as lived in samsara is suffering, (2) the cause of this suffering is craving or grasping, (3) to end craving or grasping is to end suffering, and (4) there is a way to end grasping, namely, the eightfold way—right view, right intention, right speech, right actions, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right unitive awareness.** Nagarjuna relies on the “Two Truths” doctrine—there is relative, or conventional, truth, and there is absolute, or ultimate Truth. Relative truth can be categorized and characterized, and is the basis of disciplines such as science, history, law, and so on. That a molecule of water consists of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom is a relative truth, for example. But ultimate Truth cannot be categorized at all (including that statement). Any category or quality or characteristic makes sense only in terms of its opposite, but ultimate Reality has no opposite. Based on what is known as the “Four Inexpressibles,” you can’t, according to Nagarjuna, say that ultimate Reality is Being, or not-Being, or both, or neither. You can’t say it’s implicate, or explicate, or both, or neither. You can’t say that it’s immanent in Gaia, or that it transcends Gaia, or both, or neither. You can’t say it’s a timeless Now, or a temporal everlastingness, or both, or neither. And so on for any category or quality. The reason is, as we were saying, that any concept you come up with makes sense only in terms of its opposite (liberated versus bound, infinite versus finite, something versus nothing, implicate versus explicate, pleasure versus pain, free versus limited, temporal versus timeless, good versus evil, true versus false, and so on), yet ultimate Reality has no opposite. As the Upanishads put it, “Brahman [ultimate Reality] is one without a second” and “free of the pairs”—the pairs of opposites, that is—and thus can’t be categorized at all (including that statement, which would also be formally denied). Nagarjuna says, “It is neither void, nor not void, nor both, nor neither, but in order to point it out, it is called the Void.” The Void, shunyata, or Emptiness. It’s a radical “neti, neti”—“not this, not that”—except “neti, neti” is also denied as a characteristic. A commonly used metaphor to explain the relationship of Emptiness to Form is the ocean and its waves. Typical, limited, bounded states of consciousness—from looking at a mountain, to experiencing happiness, to feeling fear, to watching a bird in flight, to listening to Mozart’s music—are all partial states and thus separate from each other; they all have a beginning (or are “born”), and they all have an ending (or “die”). They are like the individual waves in the ocean; each starts, has a certain size (from “small,” to “medium,” to “huge”), and eventually ends and, of course, they are all different from each other. But Emptiness—the Reality of each moment, its sheer transparent being, its simple “Suchness” or “Thusness” or “Isness”—is like the wetness of the ocean. And no wave is wetter than another. One wave can certainly be bigger than another, but it is not wetter. All waves are equally wet; all waves are equally Emptiness, or equally Spirit, or equally Godhead or Brahman or Tao. And that means that the very nature of this and every moment, just as it is, is pure Spirit—Spirit is not hard to reach but is impossible to avoid! And one wave can last longer than another wave, but it is still not wetter; it has no more Suchness or Thusness than the smallest wave in the entire ocean. And that means that whatever state of mind you have, right here, right now, is equally Enlightened; you can no more attain Enlightenment than you can attain your feet (or a wave can become wet). Enlightenment, and the “Big Mind/Big Heart” that reveals it, is absolutely ever-present Presence; all you have to do is recognize it. “There are no others to save (because samsara is illusory),” which is the arhat’s chant, but “There are no others to save, therefore I vow to save them all!” Where the First Turning was the way of renunciation, denying negative states as part of despised samsara, and the Second Turning was the way of transformation, working on a negative state with wisdom until it converted to a positive transcendental state, the Third Turning and its Tantric correlate was the way not of renunciation or transformation but of transmutation—of looking directly into a negative state of Form in order to directly recognize its already present state of Emptiness or Primordial Wisdom. **The tipping point:** **Up to 5 percent of the worldwide population has now reached integral levels, and some developmentalists see this increasing to 10 percent within the decade.** **This 10 percent turns out to be an important “tipping point.” What researchers have found is that, during human history, whenever the leading edge of evolution and development becomes around 10 percent of the population , major, profound, and extensive changes occur throughout the overall population, as these newly emergent values begin to populate and saturate the culture, even though only 10 percent of the population is actually at this leading-edge stage.** **For example, and using the aforementioned major stages of archaic, magic, mythic, rational, pluralistic, and integral, when 10 percent of the population in Europe reached the rational level (the era that Will and Ariel Durant called “The Age of Reason and Revolution”), about three to four hundred years ago, there occurred the French and American revolutions; the rise of representative democracy over monarchy; the abolition of slavery; the rise of virtually all of the modern sciences (modern physics, modern chemistry, modern biology, geology...** **In other words, the human race, for the first time ever in its history , is heading toward at least the possibility of a world beyond major and deep-seated conflict, and toward one marked more and more often by mutual tolerance, embrace, peace, inclusion, and compassion.** **And all we have to do for this to happen is just continue to grow!** **Stages**: Here’s a brief overview of some of these stages, the stages of Growing Up—and we will be returning to these in more detail as we go along; this is simply to give an introductory sense of what is involved:  1. An original fusion state (Gebser’s “Archaic”). Historically, the transition from the great apes to humans; today, the child’s first year of life or so, Piaget’s basic sensorimotor drives, Maslow’s “physiological needs,” and so forth.  2. An impulsive-fantasy stage (Graves’s “animistic,” Gebser’s “Magic,” Jane Loevinger’s “impulsive”). This stage governed much of the original hunting and gathering societies, where, for example, a rain dance was done to “magically” make nature rain, and today, children from ages one to three or four—for example, they will put their head under a pillow, and because they can’t see anybody, think that magically nobody can see them either.  3. The “Magic-Mythic” stage, Maslow’s “safety” needs, Loevinger’s “self-protective.” Once the self has fully differentiated itself from its environment, it feels vulnerable and becomes concerned with its safety and security, and in defense develops a strong set of power drives, or what Spiral Dynamics (a developmental stage-model based on the work of pioneer Clare Graves, and covering—that’s right—8 major levels of development, essentially the same generic ones we’re pointing out now, but specifically regarding values) colorfully calls “PowerGods,” a strong belief in superpowerful beings who could provide safety and security if approached correctly with prayer and ritual or other superstitiously enticing actions. This power stage governed humanity’s first major military empires that began to spread across the globe, facilitated by the invention of early farming that freed people from the almost constant demand to forage for food and allowed them to engage in other activities, such as fighting each other; their leaders were considered literally to be Gods—and they were, “PowerGods.” 4. Gebser’s “Mythic” stage, Lawrence Kohlberg’s conformist “law and order,” Maslow’s “belongingness” needs, Loevinger’s “conformist” stage, “mythic-membership,” and so forth. A more conformist, group-oriented stage, where people still believe in supernatural beings of a decidedly mythic (but concrete-literal) sort, and believe that mythic-religious books are the literal truth of a supreme Being—the Bible, the Koran, the Pentateuch, some Pure Land sutras. James Fowler called this the “Mythic-literal” stage, since the myths are believed literally : Moses really did part the Red Sea, Elijah really did go straight to heaven while still alive, Lao Tzu really was nine hundred years old when he was born, and so on. This is still largely the basis of fundamentalist traditional religious beliefs; also the source of much prejudiced thinking and a great deal of terrorism (all done, of course, in the name of a chosen “God”). 5. Gebser’s “Rational,” Piaget’s “formal operational,” Durant’s “Reason and Revolution,” Fowler’s “individuative,” Loevinger’s “conscientious,” and Maslow’s “self-esteem.” This stage is characterized by the emergence of a world-shaking reason and a more scientific and evidence-based approach to truth, because an individualistic sense of self, capable of 3 rd person reason, is developing out of the previous 2 nd person conformist and mythic-membership stage. Spiral Dynamics calls this new stage “StriveDrive,” since the drive to progress and achievement becomes central. With the development of “reason, individuality, the modern sciences, and progress,” this stage is accompanied everywhere by the emergence of what we now recognize as modernity , particularly focused on the Western Enlightenment.  6. “Pluralistic,” Graves’s “relativistic,” “multicultural,” “Gaiacentric,” “ecocentric,” “nonmarginalizing.” A stage where people believe that “there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of” in your rational philosophy and science, and there is a switch to multicultural, socially constructed, and therefore culturally differing beliefs; in short, what we now call the postmodern era, first announced in the student rebellions of the sixties, then spreading widely. This is a largely “egalitarian” level, where all people and all cultures are seen as being equally valuable and equally true; no ranking, no hierarchies, no judging. This is the highest commonly available stage yet to emerge, where it is in a constant “Culture Wars” with the previous two stages—thus, postmodern multicultural values (#6) versus modern, rational, progressive, scientific values (#5) versus traditional mythic religious values (#4), all fighting for supremacy.  7. “Holistic,” “integrated,” and “Integral” stages, collectively called “2 nd tier”; Graves’s “systemic,” Loevinger’s “integrated,” Gebser’s “aperspectival-integral,” Maslow’s “self-actualization” needs. Finally, on the leading edge of today, we find the actual emergence of unified and integrated stages, where people believe that there is some degree of deep significance and importance to all of these previous stages, if for no other reason than that they become components of the higher stages themselves. This level (or levels) sees wholes everywhere and strives to bring the world together in interwoven unified harmonies. It is the very cutting edge of evolution today and is responsible for the majority of breakthrough discoveries now occurring at accelerated rates in all the major disciplines. At this point, only around 5 percent of the world’s population has reached this level, but it promises to be a game changer in every way. It also marks an end to the “Culture Wars,” precisely because it is the first level to see value in all previous levels. And it (and the next stage) has a major hand in the creation of Integral approaches to various fields, including Integral Spirituality.  8. “Super-Integral” stages or “3 rd tier” stages; Susanne Cook-Greuter’s “ego-aware” and “unitive,” Jenny Wade’s “transcendence and unity,” Maslow’s “self-transcendence” needs, and so on. Right now, a likely possibility (since evolution never stops) is the emergence of even yet greater stages where one’s identity actually shifts to higher, supraindividual, transpersonal, spiritual sources (and here join up with higher “states,” as we will carefully explore). In short, structures are how we GROW UP; states are how we WAKE UP. Fullness and Freedom. And Shadow structures. CLEAN UP (whereupon one shadow-hugs or shadowboxes one’s way through life.) And SHOWING UP. **Growing Up (into genuine Fullness), a Waking Up (into radical Freedom), a Cleaning Up (into real Flourishing), and a Showing Up (into Full Functioning).** “3 S’s”—structures of consciousness (Views - Spiritual Intelligence), states of consciousness (Vantage Points - Spiritual Experience), and shadow elements. Consciousness or Wakefulness starts out identified with the waking state (and gross body), and yet it will (mostly unconsciously) “cycle” through all major states at least once every twenty-four hours (moving from waking gross to dreaming subtle to deep-sleep causal, while resting in ever-present witnessing/nondual). But unless a person specifically takes up a practice such as meditation or contemplation, he or she (or the self’s state center of gravity) will likely remain identified with the gross waking state (at least until significantly later in life, usually midlife or later). The main reason is that as a person’s self-sense passes from one major state to the next, it will “pass out” or “go blank” (as when it passes from waking into dream or deep sleep) and so it will not know—while it is in that different state—that it has changed states at all. The self will happily dream away, almost completely unaware that it is asleep, unconscious, and dreaming at all—until, of course, it wakes up (“Wow, that was just a dream!”). Several years of meditation—which trains the Witness or Wakefulness to remain aware as it changes state—will usually be required for the self to be able to remain aware during sleep and thus experience “lucid dreaming”—being in the subtle dream state and knowing that you are in that state. But once that begins to consistently happen, you start to realize that, not only are you not identified with your gross waking ego, but there is something that remains Aware and Awake in you, even in the dream state—so you are not identified wholly with the dream state either. **What modern science has found—and an Integral approach can certainly accept—is that evolution has resulted in a constant complexification of gross matter, whose objective exteriors (the phenomenon looked at from the outside in an objective fashion, individually and collectively) become more and more complex , while their subjective interiors (the phenomena looked at from the inside, from within their interiors, individually and collectively) become more and more conscious . This is Teilhard de Chardin’s famous law of “complexity and consciousness”—namely, the more of one, the more of the other.** The 3 rd tier structures are also marked primarily by their perception of wholes: indigo, by directly seeing wholes; violet, by directly feeling wholes; ultraviolet, by directly witnessing wholes; and clear light, by directly being wholes. This will be a supramental, directly intervenes in evolution (by way of involution/Efflux), not via mere computational power artifacts—as with the prophesied technological singularity—but unswervingly via human (or superhuman) intentionality directly and immediately altering the networked structure of the Kosmos itself. This is another reason that you—your thoughts, actions, feelings, communications, interactions, and behaviors—can directly contribute to evolution in all 4 quadrants, simply by adding something new and novel that hasn’t existed before (including thoughts, feelings, ideas). If your addition is occurring on teal or turquoise (or higher), then it is open to becoming part of the very structure of that level of consciousness (Left Hand quadrants) and complexity (Right Hand quadrants). You don’t need to have sex and pass on some fluky genetic mutation to somebody else who also had the same fluky mutation in order to contribute to evolution. **Simply think the highest thoughts you can; feel the deepest love you are capable of; reach up or down to the highest, or deepest, Divinity that you can experience; treat others with the tenderest of kindness and the most caring of compassion that you possibly can; and if you are anywhere near the leading edge of evolution (which you certainly are if you are interested in the subjects found in this and similar books), you will directly, immediately, and instantly contribute to what Whitehead called “an ultimate of the universe”—namely, the “creative advance into novelty.”** In other words, you will contribute to evolution itself. Indeed, welcome to your place in history. **This is a process that is headed straight to Supermind, which is, in itself, nothing short of what indeed could be called “superhuman,” and that is now indeed an aspect of humanity’s own future—that is, its own genuine “superhumanity,” a combination of evolution into the superhuman dimensions of all 4 quadrants—from Upper Left state Big Mind, to Lower Right technological Singularity, to Lower Left cultural transformation, to Upper Right cyborg brain/computer/consciousness connections, to Upper Left structural Supermind itself.** By way of analogy, imagine a fence with one vertical board missing, so that when you sit on one side of the fence, you can look through that slit and see things passing by on the other side. A cat walks pass the opening—you see its head, then its body, then its tail. Out of your sight, the cat turns around and begins to walk past the open slit again. And once more, you see its head pass by, then its body, then its tail. You might naturally think to yourself, “Ah, the head is causing the tail!” Because you can’t see the wholeness of the cat, you see it only in partial, temporal segments, one segment after another. The entire world seen through this slit thus appears in a linear, temporal fashion even though if you were to get up and sit on top of the fence, you would see an entire world of Wholes, all simultaneously coexisting together. Imagine that the film world—unfolding in the headless space of one taste—is now seen not in a one-at-a-time fashion that gives the illusion of temporal linearity (with the future emerging into the present and moving into the past) but instead in an “all-at-onceness” of pure wholeness or unity. Imagine that instead of looking at the film one frame at a time, you cut up all the frames, stacked them on top of each other, and then put the stack in front of a light and looked through all the frames simultaneously. Of course, in actuality, all you would see is a blur; so you have to imagine being able to see each frame individually, while also seeing them all together as a single, whole, simultaneous event. Robert Kegan defines development as “the subject of one stage becomes an object of the subject of the next.” **The 3-2-1 Process:** The dysfunctional process of shadow creation, in other words, proceeds from 1 st person to 2 nd person to 3 rd person—or 1-2-3. Therefore, the 3-2-1 process developed by myself and the Integral Institute reverses that process, moving the alienated 3 rd person “it” material to a directly faced 2 nd person “you” element to a fully re-owned and re-identified 1 st person or “I/me” material. **The 3-2-1 process starts by identifying the 3 rd person item that one is most reactive to, either in life or in dreams (the monster, one’s boss).** **This material, by the way, can be positive or negative—if positive, one overly admires, vastly overrates, or hero-worships the person onto whom one’s own greatness or other valuable positive qualities have been projected; if negative, various individuals in the environment seem full of that negative quality, often directed right at you—in this example, one’s anger.** **So, after identifying the reactive element in one’s mind, one then faces this other person, creature, or thing and talks to it in the 2 nd person. “Who are you? What do you want? Why are you here?” and so on, for several minutes or more, creating an I-thou dialogue with this 2 nd person material, converting it from a 3 rd person absence into a 2 nd person presence.** **After really getting to know, and especially, feeling, this 2 nd person, one then takes the role of this 2 nd person in the dialogue and identifies with this person or creature, speaking not to them but as them, until one has thoroughly re-owned, and re-identified with, the quality, feeling, or characteristic that this projection was holding, thus returning it to the 1 st person element that it really is.** When the process is done correctly, there is usually a great sense of relief and release when finished. If the attribute was experienced as a negative quality, which is often how positive qualities are experienced when dis-owned and projected, re-owning it will return it to its inherently positive, joyous qualities—a terrific relief, converting this frightening “it” to a happy “I”! So the steps in 3-2-1 are: Find it, Face it, Talk to it, Be it. Step One: Find It . Locate the symptom, pressure, pain, image, person, or thing that seems to be the core of the problem—the fear, anxiety, depression, obsession, jealousy, envy, anger. Locate it, and notice everything about it—the symptoms themselves (the uncomfortable feelings generated by the problematic person, place, or event). Notice its location in your body (for example, head, eyes, chest, breasts, arms, shoulders, stomach, gut, genitals, thighs, lower legs, feet, toes, perhaps single muscles or muscle groups, sometimes bodily organ systems—digestive, urinary, reproductive, respiratory, circulatory, neuronal). Notice its general size, color, shape, smell, texture (whatever comes to mind when you think any of those elements). Notice what seems to most trigger it, what seems to soothe it, and activities that often accompany it (for example, increased heart rate, increased breathing, particular muscle tightening, headaches, difficulty swallowing, sexual inadequacy or disinterest). Don’t judge them as good or bad, positive or negative. Just pretend that you are videotaping them, taking pictures of them, exactly as they are, not as you want or wish them to be—you are aiming for just a simple, comprehensive mindfulness of them. Get a lot of plain neutral videotape on every aspect of the problem. Get it fully in your awareness as an object. Step Two: Face It . Once you have a good deal of videotape of the problematic item, then face it. If the symptom seems to be triggered by a particular person, then locate that person in your mind, and face him or her (or them). It might help to sit in a chair and put another “empty chair” in front of you. Put the problem in the empty chair—the person, monster, image, event, or simply the symptom itself (depression, anxiety, fear, envy).  Step Three: Talk with It . Ask it numerous questions, and listen carefully to what it has to say. “Why are you here?” “What do you want?” “Why are you doing this to me?” “Where did you come from?” “How long have you been here?” “When did you start?” If it doesn’t know the answer to any of these questions, ask it to guess. “Well, you say you don’t know why you’re here. Why do you think you’re here?” When it asks you a question, answer it, and see how the problematic person or entity responds; you might even ask the problem issue what it (or he or she or them) thought of your answer. Get to know it directly as a living, breathing, creative, next-door neighbor, a person addressed in the 2 nd person, converting it from a 3 rd person “him,” “her,” “them,” or “it” directly into a 2 nd person “you” or “thou.” The more you do each of these steps, the more likely you will already notice a certain diminution of the symptom itself. Then finally:  Step Four: Be It . Now, switch roles entirely. When it responds, you sit in its chair, and you yourself become the problem (person, monster, issue, and so forth). Identify with it. Speak in the dialogue as it, not to it. And speak to your regular self, sitting in the chair in front of you. Feel what it is like to be this symptom that is intentionally causing another person—the person sitting in the chair in front of you—these problems. It is here that you have to be the most observant and the most open. When the person (the regular you) sitting in front of you (as problem) asks, “Why are you doing this to me?” you have to be able to step into a role of someone who might be extremely mean-spirited and demeaning: “Because you’re a stupid little moron, and you deserve to suffer.” “You’ve always been a huge disappointment to me because you can’t do anything right.” A good way to explore those kinds of responses is to ask, “Just whose voice is that ? Mom’s? Dad’s? A sibling’s? An early friend’s?” This is the opposite of projection, called “introjection,” the internalizing of an alien, false voice into your mind as if it were yours. In these cases, you don’t re-own that voice; you toss it out! So keep that possibility in mind as well. Most people have extensive nets of introjections—internalized opinions, directives, commands, drives, or notions—that they got from their parents, early teachers, close friends, and especially the culture at large. These internalized networks, part of what we call “the embedded unconscious,” are just that: embedded opinions and directives, whose internalized nature we are totally unaware of, but that tell us insistently what to think about virtually everything out there, and “in here” as well, and a significant part of shadow work is directly looking for the elements of this embedded network of introjections and then ejecting—dis-identifying with—these embedded introjected notions. **“Flourishing” and Journaling:** If you want to take shadow work seriously, keeping a simple journal is a good idea. Use it to record brief summaries of your 3-2-1 sessions or actually conduct the 3-2-1 sessions in handwritten (or computer-written) dialogues in the journal itself. I’m going to mention something here very briefly that is actually quite important, and I don’t want the brevity of the discussion to be mistaken for the topic’s being of lesser importance, because it’s a very significant subject. It’s something called “Daily Entries.” If you are doing shadow work, or if you are meditating or practicing contemplative prayer—or engaged in any sort of Integral Life Practice—it’s a very good idea, each morning when you wake up and before you get out of bed, to do a brief 3-2-1 with any significant elements in the night’s dream, and then make a “daily entry.” This daily entry is a three-page entry (no more, no less) about anything “personal” that you want to write down at all—it could be about last night’s dream, today’s coming events, something that happened to you in the past, any thoughts that happen to cross your mind, on any topic, right now, or some particularly striking event or insight in yesterday’s meditation. If you can’t think of anything to write, then write about that (“I can’t think of a single thing. Why am I doing this, anyway? It’s incredibly boring, I don’t see the point, how idiotic can you get? Write, write, write, big deal…”). The point is to bring mindfulness—a pure, neutral, judgment-free Witnessing—to bear on each sentence that you write, making that subjective statement into a clear object of awareness. So bring a pure, clear, Witnessing awareness to bear on every sentence that you write. This three-page entry becomes the place where you make mindfulness/Witnessing a permanent habit in mind, thus building into your psyche the single essential element found in all developmental and evolutionary processes: **the subject of one moment becomes the object of the subject of the next.** This is what the awareness that you develop when you do a “daily entry” in effect does—it inscribes on your mind the essential spirit of evolution; it makes growth and development a Kosmic habit, a Kosmic groove, in your own being, and not only unconsciously (which is what typically happens) but also consciously. **Forgiveness:**  Try “One Thing a Day,” where, for a few minutes—five minutes is fine—each evening, pick the event that most irritated you that day, and practice forgiving the person—the other person, or perhaps yourself—most responsible for it. It’s also a good idea, at least in the beginning, to spend a few minutes with “One Thing Each Yesterday”: begin a list (keep it in your journal) of all the things and people that you can think of—from your past—whom you are angry with, blame something important on, or deeply regret knowing because of something they did to you (or you suspect that they did). For some people (such as your parents), this will likely be a list of things that you resent. Directly and genuinely practice forgiving that person (or yourself) for each specific item until it really “takes.” You will know when it takes when either one of those A Course in Miracles quotes kicks in, and you feel either a closer presence of Spirit’s Love, or a more direct contact with your own Higher Self (however you conceive it). Each time you genuinely forgive somebody whom you believe wronged you (including yourself with various issues), you will feel the separate-self sense uncoil just a little bit more, relaxing more and more into the vast All Space that is its own truest and most self-liberating Nature. And when you spot the cause of the particular repression, the fundamental response, in almost every case, is the same: you need to forgive yourself for whatever it is that you are or did, think you are or did, were told you are or did, or fantasized you are or did. Another reason that practicing forgiveness is so important—and worth practicing daily—is that it is the fundamental key to ending the repressing, defending, dis-owning drive in yourself. Buddhism summarizes its entire teachings in three major strands: shila, dhyana , and prajna. The first foundational item is shila , which means “ethics.” Dhyana means meditation (it’s a Sanskrit term, which, translated into Chinese, is channa , and that translated into Japanese is zenna , or Zen). The third is prajna , which we have seen as pro-gnosis, the Awakened awareness of Enlightenment that is the aim of the whole sequence. But the sequence can’t even get started without shila, without ethics, without normative shoulds . No ethics, no Awakened awareness, no Enlightenment. Thus, rage first tentatively emerges at rung 1; when images are added to rage (at rung 2), you get anger; when concepts are added to anger (at rung 3), you get hatred—and so on up the spectrum. Likewise with satisfaction to pleasure to joy to happiness to bliss, spanning all three tiers. Right now, the orange formal mind, which has, for several hundred years now, been collapsed to its largely reductionistic, dysfunctional, and frankly pathological versions (from flatland scientific materialism to a greed-infested version of capitalism), faces perhaps its largest and most serious challenge to date: the global warming issue. This problem, in many ways, a result of orange artifactual and technological know-how commandeered by either lower levels of cultural moral development or by a pathological version of orange itself, is perhaps the most serious overall threat to life on this planet, in its many forms, that has yet been faced in all of humanity’s history. **In terms of what is amounting to a horse race concerning humanity’s future, we have in the positive pan a Right-hand coming technological singularity and a Left-hand possible 2 nd tier global transformation; and, in the negative pan, a Right-hand global warming and drastic ecological despoliation and a Left-hand stationing of the center of gravity for 60 to 70 percent of the population at ethnocentric amber (that is, the center of gravity of most Nazis) or lower.** This race, with the future of humanity at stake—either a glorious one headed toward humanity’s highest potentials in general or a hellish nightmare of the torturous collapse of humankind’s very means of survival—is, unfortunately, at this time too close to call. What is so exciting about this development is that, precisely because it is still being laid down in so many of its features and dimensions, it is still, in some significant ways, open to the co-enacting and co-creating that we—that you and I—actually bring to this process. Because these habits are not fully set in all their characteristics, they are still being formed. By our very thoughts, beliefs, endeavors, and actions, we are helping to lay down habitual Forms of the Kosmos that are stored in that Form-storage bin (and where the morphogenetic fields or developmental patterns of all manifest forms are contained, from the form of an atom to the form of the folding protein to the form of the amber level), wherever it might happen to be. **The 2nd tier Green allergy:** A very common pathology at 2 nd tier—perhaps even the most common—is a green allergy. With a green allergy, the 2 nd tier individual, sick and tired of the extreme green culture that he or she had to fight so hard in order to emerge into Integral, simply dissociates and dis-owns any and all of its remaining green impulses and qualities, and projects them onto the world at large, and then the “mean green meme” seems to be absolutely everywhere. As always, the projection of a shadow element makes the presence of that shadow element in the world seem enormously greater than it really is, and this certainly happens with the green allergy that 2 nd tier often develops. The only cure, as always, is to re-own and integrate the green components of the self (via something like a 3-2-1 process), and then transcend and include them in a healthy 2 nd tier structure. Failure to do so can significantly slow, even stall, further development (into 3 rd tier). Green definitely needs to be transcended , but it also needs to be included . It is common, for example, for individuals to reach 2 nd tier in their cognition, but have their proximate self-sense (or center of gravity) remain at green. It’s easier to “talk” Integral than to actually “walk” Integral. But these types of issues are to be expected with any movement such as Integral. Keep in mind, this is the first major stage where a fair number of individuals actually know it is coming and continue with an eye out watching for more and more of its signs. If you look at the 1960s, when the green postmodern Pluralistic stage first emerged on a wide scale and the various revolutions that such emergence brought took place, virtually nobody—from authorities to laypeople—had even guessed, in the 1950s, that those revolutions and their massive changes were headed directly for us. The student revolutions that began in May 1968, Paris, and spread to the rest of world, took almost everybody by complete surprise. But as those revolutions went into full force, the bulk of developmental studies was becoming more and more well known—even if it was just to have green and its antiranking condemn all of them. But all of those developmental models, without exception, showed a stage or two higher than the Pluralistic postmodern, which was presently driving the various revolutions (the higher stages were variously called, at the time, “systemic,” “autonomous,” “integrated,” “integrative,” “integral,” “integral-aperspectival,” “strategist”), and thus the coming Integral revolution was widely expected (even if by a relatively small number of people overall; and a good number of individuals are still tracking the emergence of Integral). **And unlike the participants in the Pluralistic revolutions of the 1960s, who did not know that most of their basic assumptions were the product of a particular, specific stage of human development, most of the people in Integral organizations are fully aware of developmental studies, and thus they have at least some sort of self-reflective awareness that they are close to the edge of evolution itself.** **Shadows:** What we learn from shadow material is that it is a direct result of the very form of evolution itself. Evolution is an ongoing process of transcend and include (or negate and preserve , or differentiate and integrate ), in every realm it touches, and something can go wrong with either one of those core aspects of evolution, which each time produces a different type of shadow material specific to the particular structure or state where the malformation occurs. In general, if something goes wrong with the transcending or differentiating component, then the self fails to adequately let go of its present level or stage (in either structure or state), and some aspects of its own being remain fused with, or stuck to, elements of that level, producing a fixation , or an addiction , to those elements, which are now split-off from, and dis-owned by, the main currents of consciousness (and the proximate self) and relegated to the unconscious, as shadow impulses or even full subpersonalities, which are then often projected onto others. On the other hand, if something goes wrong with the include or preserve component, then the self fails to adequately integrate and embrace aspects of its own being, and an avoidance , or allergy , to those aspects is created, while those aspects—like those previously fixated to—are split-off from, and dis-owned by, the central/proximate self, or main currents of consciousness, and relegated to the unconscious as shadow impulses, or full subpersonalities, and from there often projected onto others. **God's name:** One of the most profound problems imaginable with this development is that the only language widely available to discuss this transrational God comes from nothing but the prerational holdovers of a much earlier and less mature era. Virtually every word out of the mouth of anybody in Coming Age Worldview will be exposed to various “pre/trans fallacies”—that is, confusing prerational and trans-rational because both are nonrational. And so here is my “globally sweeping (every man, woman, and child)” claim: we need an entirely new language, an entirely new semiotics, an entirely new way to talk about God, in order to describe the world that we are growing into. Without that, we are headed for a confusion-of-meaning epidemic that is of staggering proportions. **Soul/Ego:** The soul, in relation to the ego, is primarily defined by its “visionary” qualities, which in their various forms, move quite beyond the standard, ordinary, gross, sensorimotor, or physical realm. The ego, in all its actions—including even the way it uses the Wholeness of vision-logic—is always something in final reference to the sensorimotor realm. In its food drives, it is material; in its sex, it is physical; in its fame and fortune, it is in reference to the amount of gross sensorimotor goods it can purchase and consume—lots of money, many houses, numerous expensive automobiles, lots of women with attractive physical attributes (or many adoring men), global travel, and so on. It uses vision-logic to create vast networks of holistic systems (as vision-logic, by definition, does), but all the systems are composed of material sensorimotor bits (actual physical objects or physical digital data bits and bytes, and physically transmitted information streams). It is related, in its thoughts, actions, and deeds, to the Right-hand, exterior, sensorimotor surfaces of all things and events, and this is in keeping with its essentially gross and gross-reflecting nature. The soul, on the other hand, is oriented to interiors. This includes a native orientation to Left-hand phenomena, both in itself and in other beings. The soul lives on vision and visionary elements (all the way up to the meta-mind and its visionary worldview). This means elements that, in themselves, are not directly related to the present, physical, gross sensorimotor realm but to today’s wildest possibilities, highest reaches, deepest feelings, widest perspectives, grandest visions, most creative insights, and the greater grandeur of what tomorrow can bring, in all its wondrous possibilities and evolutionary innovations. According to many traditions, the soul is the aspect of consciousness that, composed of the same “subtle energy” as the wildly creative dream state and the bardo realm (the “in between” state following the death of the present gross body and the individual’s reincarnation in the next life’s gross body), is said to actually exist in a continuing fashion from one life to the next to the next (until final Liberation). **The ego stores lessons we learn in this life; the soul stores ongoing lessons we learn from life to life.** The traditions generally maintain (including many of the early schools of Christianity) that we are put here on earth to learn certain vital and central issues of existence itself, and as these lessons are learned, they are stored in what the Tibetans call “the eternal drop for all time.” That is, there is an ongoing, reincarnating, life-to-life learning process, which stores our accumulated “wisdom” and “virtue.” Thus, the soul doesn’t contain specific memories of past lives—the memories of one’s present life are stored in the organic brain of this life’s gross body (and the Tibetans refer to this as “the drop for this life”) and die when that brain and its body die. Rather the soul contains the general life lessons summarized as our “wisdom,” which usually means understanding of ultimate Truth (Godhead, Emptiness or Suchness, absolute bodhichitta ), and our “virtue,” which usually means our understanding of relative truth (“good deeds” and compassion, relative bodhichitta). Remembering being “Cleopatra” or “Napoleon” is not what the soul is about; continuing to grow in wisdom and virtue, from life to life, is. But Integral Theory, as a metatheory, makes room for reincarnation as a possible hypothesis , and if we tentatively accept this hypothesis, I believe that as this subtle soul travels from life to life, we are born, in each life, with a given “developmental set point”—the highest general level of development that we achieved in our previous life, whether red, orange, turquoise, violet, and so forth. (There is also a state developmental set point; same basic idea but with reference to states.) Given this set point, all of our development and transformation in our new life, up to the set-point altitude, occurs relatively quickly and easily and with very few problems; once at the set-point altitude, the individual must then begin sincere and often difficult growth and consciousness transformation, often with great effort, since each new and higher stage of development (structure or state) is bought only by learning new lessons that are not contained in the soul’s accumulated “wisdom” and “virtue” thus far (and included in its set point). So each stage that the self manages to attain in the new life, beyond the set-point stage, occurs by the self learning new and higher wisdoms and virtues, which are then stored in its “eternal drop” and become part of the new set point in its next life. **involution/evolution:** There is a common saying in the Energy Traditions, which reflects the ongoing nature of involution/evolution and the influence of the higher dimensions on the lower via “downward causation”: “**If you want to know what you were thinking yesterday, look at your body today; if you want to know what your body will look like tomorrow, look at your thinking today.”** That is, the higher realms, such as subtle soul and mind—and their thoughts—can have effects via downward involution all the way down to the gross physical body and its appearance, as well as its health and illness. What your body looks like today—as well as any illnesses it might have—are in part the result of what you were thinking yesterday; and what your body will be like tomorrow is in part the result of what you are thinking right now: the “downward causation” of involution… In short, there is a spectrum of consciousness (including states, structures, and shadows) in the Upper Left quadrant, and each of those components has a correlate at the same altitude in the spectrum of mass-energy in the Upper Right quadrant. A dysfunction in either spectrum transmits to the other, and to one degree or another infects it as well. Thus, a problem at the green altitude in the Upper Left will also transmit to the green-altitude region of the mid-subtle mass-energy spectrum in the brain in the Upper Right, dysfunctionally infecting it. Via the process of downward causation of the moment-to-moment involutionary current, this energetic dysfunction can then transmit down the spectrum to any number of lower levels (thus, this subtle-soul illness can transmit/involve downward to generate a mental illness, which can transmit/involve downward to generate an emotional illness, which can end up transmitting all the way down to trigger a physical illness. In typically going all the way down and crashing at the lowest level, the gross material-physical dimension, it will likely manifest as actual physical illness—an illness that ultimately can be cured only by curing the origin point of the overall problem—in this case, the green altitude dysfunction and its mid-subtle-range energetic component). **I have often pointed out that each state and structure faces in two directions vertically: looking “downward,” it faces the previous stage (and all previous, lower, junior stages); looking “upward,” it faces the next-to-emerge higher stage (and all higher, senior stages). The former is driven by Agape, or the loving embrace of the junior by the senior; the latter is driven by Eros, or the drive of the junior to reach even higher wholes and stages (a higher Love, as it were). The former (Agape) is a holon caringly embracing its own subholons; the latter (Eros), a holon looking to become a subholon in a yet-greater superholon.** Spiritually, “love of the lower” (for example, love of “lower” life forms, of “lower” feelings in one’s own being, of “lower” sentient beings, of lower holons in any compound individual or superholon, of putatively “lower” or disadvantaged humans) can often start out as a genuine, loving, caring Agape. But if it’s not balanced with an equal input from Eros, all of one’s love ends up being aimed in the “junior” direction, and as that starts to feel slightly uncomfortable—because so unbalanced—one might simply intensify that form of love, not knowing any other course of action, and thus end up pushing into actually lower and lower states and realms of being and consciousness. If this downward spiral continues, the individual, in severe find dental trips for oxycodone more and more common, or one way or another, eventually end up with a full-blown addiction at the lowest levels—drug and substance abuse. (This is not an exaggerated claim, and seeing its truth depends upon getting the “feel” of full-blown Thanatos—a drive, or desire, to blot out one’s painful sense of existence, an almost suicidal wish not to have to feel oneself confronting an uncaring world anymore, a need to “disappear” entirely in a totally numbed out, and in that sense “insentient,” state—a state generally delivered by intoxication in its many forms; it’s a short step from deeply wanting a love of the lower to actually finding it.) Such intense addictions notoriously lead one down the nested hierarchy of motivations (and life in general): first surrendering 2 nd tier self-actualization (and a higher cause for spiritual pursuits), then surrendering orange self-esteem (many addicts can remember the exact point they spent the last ounce of their self-esteem to get drugs), then letting go of amber communal belonging (usually abandoning any genuine friends at all), then moving into merely egocentric and narcissistic levels, gripped by red power and finally infrared physiological drives alone, attempting merely to attain the desired state experience. This experience usually starts out even better than hoped for, not only blotting out the painful self’s existence but also delivering a genuine taste and infusion of bliss-soaked subtle or causal or even nondual experience. This drive to experience self-transcendence in a positive, euphoric sense becomes a major, unacknowledged motivation for virtually all substance addictions. The individual takes a hit of crack, and for the first time in his or her life is ushered into a radically blissful state of experiential Wholeness—one hit of that, and he or she is hooked. Only when they hit bottom—the bottom of everything: relationships, love, work, sex, parenting, money, house—when there is nothing left to lose, does recovery begin. This is the grip of Thanatos—a desire to love malformed into a desire to die, and adopting means that are in effect slowly but surely suicidal. All of the pathologies and dysfunctions just discussed can be treated to some degree with the 3-2-1 or 3-2-1-0 process, at least as a beginning program of shadow work, more extensive and sophisticated forms of which can certainly be sought if desired. Once individuals get a feel for this 3-2-1 process (or the 3-2-1-0 process), they often easily include it in any meditation practice they are using. Shadow work in general is a rehearsal of Enlightenment itself, a rehearsal of a direct realization of the Supreme Identity, where something that was felt to be other or outside or separate from me—which, in the case of the Supreme Identity, is Spirit itself and the entire manifest world appearing to arise and exist out there, separate and set apart from the little finite me in here—is recognized as one’s true Nature. This Recognition heals that fragmented split and returns the Kosmos to its true condition, a seamless (not featureless) Whole reality hanging together in every direction. That which seemed utterly and absolutely alien to me is actually of one nature with me—the deepest me—and the entire universe is actually arising within me . And being free of that otherness, I am released likewise from fear, suffering, torment, terror (following the Upanishads, “Where there is other, there is fear”). I realize that I have, in the deepest source of my own being, broken a prior Wholeness into a subject in here and a world of objects out there, and then wrestling with that world of objects becomes my entire life—wanting them, fearing them, chasing them, avoiding them, all the while ignoring my prior, true, ultimately Whole and Real condition, the realization of which constitutes the Great Liberation. Likewise, in a smaller degree, and almost as a type of rehearsal, with shadow work, I start with a sense of myself as a subject in here, which has become fraudulent and basically unreal because I have broken it into pieces in the deepest fashion, identified with some of the pieces and denied and projected the rest, converting the world out there into a world both even more dangerous and even more alluring than was previously the case, as my shadow falls over each and every one of the world’s objects, casting a glimmering glow that is actually an illusion through and through. The illusion evaporates if, and only if, I re-identify with those pieces of myself that I have denied and tossed to the winds. Doing so is a miniature liberation, liberation from the small anxieties, petty depressions, and mediocre angst that were created with the original lie about myself, the lie that I contained none of those shadows but the world was full of them. The shadow, as the nexus of the finite lie, is returned to its proper home; a finite truth, freedom, unity, and wholeness results. Like waves in the ocean, or drops of rain from the sky, like rays from the sun, or bands in a rainbow—the metaphors are endless, the message the same: we are all outflowing manifestations of this infinite Spirit, with but one True Self looking out of the eyes of each and every sentient being alive, all the way down to atoms, with each evolutionary advance simply increasing the sensitivity of a being to the world around it—from atomic reactivity to cellular sensations, to neural nets and actual perception, to reptilian brain stems and active impulses, to early mammalian limbic systems and powerful emotions, to later mammalian cortexes and images and symbols, to the primate neocortex and early protoconcepts, to the human triune brain and its capacity for formal reason, to brain synchronization and “unity” states—in short, from subconscious to self-conscious to superconscious. Robert Kegan, noted Harvard developmentalist, estimates that, on average, it takes about five years to move through any major level of development. **Integral spirituality:** Integral Spirituality should consider including are, of course, states of consciousness (and state-stages, or Vantage Points); the dual center of gravity of overall development (View and Vantage Point); quadrants (or the 1-2-3 of Spirit, discussed below); major typologies (such as  Myers-Briggs or the Enneagram); shadow and shadow work; multiple intelligences (or developmental lines); technological breakthroughs in brain/mind connections and AI engaged in spirituality; polarity therapy; and a handful of other miscellaneous items. There are extensive arguments for each of these being an intrinsic aspect of any truly comprehensive or inclusive spirituality of tomorrow.  An Integral Spirituality recognizes that human beings have several different but equally important dimensions to their makeup, such as their major perspective orientation (or quadrant, in Showing Up); their major level of development in general (or structure center of gravity, in Growing Up); their major state center of gravity (in Waking Up); various unconscious, or shadow, elements (in Cleaning Up); their predominant type of intelligence or line; their major personality type—and it also recognizes that Spirit operates in and through all of these . Failing to take any of those dimensions into account—at least in a simplified or introductory fashion—is to catastrophically ignore and deny that dimension of Spirit. It is to approach the world spiritually blind in many of our eyes. It is to stumble numbed and nearsighted into the universe, hobbled in some of the most important ways through which Spirit tries to reach us, touch us, speak to us, speak through us, Awaken us, Awaken as us. An Integral Spirituality demands that we fully approach matter, body, mind, soul, and Spirit in self, culture, and nature—nothing less. **States/Structures (Stages):** **If states generally determine what it is that we can experience (gross objects, subtle objects, causal objects, and so forth), structures determine how we experience those objects—the very meaning, interpretation, experience, and value of those objects (at a magic level, a mythic level, a rational level, a pluralistic, an integral, a super-integral).** **Summary Structures:** All human beings start at a stage of fusion or symbiotic embeddedness, where the self is not yet differentiated from its surroundings (infrared, Archaic). This differentiation eventually occurs, and the self emerges as an egocentric, mostly impulsive, immediate gratification self-sense (at about eighteen months, often called “the psychological birth of the infant”; magenta, impulsive fantasy, Magic). This solidifies into an even more separate-self sense, with a keen desire for safety, self-protection, or power (red, Magic-Mythic, “PowerGods”). This egocentric series of selves eventually grows into an ethnocentric series of selves, as the self takes on the capacity of a 2 nd person perspective (“the role of other”) and adopts conventional rules , producing a stage of sharp conformity (amber, the rule/role mind, Mythic-membership). Out of this conformist stage, with the arising of a 3 rd person universal perspective and, generally, the emergence of a rational capacity, the ethnocentric-identity-centered self gives way to a postconventional, postconformist, individuated, worldcentric self (autonomous, agentic, individualized, self-authoring, self-esteem desiring), capable of standing back both from itself and from its culture, to some degree, and reflecting on—and criticizing—both of them (orange, Rational, modern). This expands into a full-blown pluralistic, or even relativistic, self-sense (a 4 th person perspective, which reflects on 3 rd person worldcentric occasions), with multiple cultural sensitivities, a keen sense of marginalized, oppressed, and suppressed minorities, and a drive to correct those injustices (green, postmodern, Pluralistic). But lacking a truly global cognitive capacity, this pluralistic stage can at most criticize marginalizing but cannot conceive of integrative and unitive ways to overcome it (it deconstructs but cannot reconstruct). This occurs at the next major stage (usually noticed to be “a monumental leap of meaning”—because of its 5 th person perspective, which reflects on 4 th person fragmentations everywhere and hence introduces a unitive cognitive capacity, or vision-logic, that is capable of noticing universal common patterns and thus can provide unifying solutions to the marginalized fragments), a stage variously referred to as systemic, integrative, holistic, integral, autonomous, strategic, or similar such terms (teal, Holistic; and turquoise, Integral). It is this stage that the majority of structure-development models (in whatever multiple intelligence) list as the highest available level so far, although those models that continue further almost unanimously see any higher stages as being variations on “universal/mystical” or “self-transcending” or “transpersonal” stages (3 rd tier, super-integral). **3rd Tier Level:** The indigo para-mind (Fulcrum-9) is marked by a profound understanding that the world is not merely physical but psychophysical (which means, whether explicitly stated this way or not, that the individual understands that every occasion in existence, top to bottom, possesses 4 quadrants, or dimension-perspectives—that is, it possesses both objective or Right-hand exteriors, and subjective or Left-hand interiors, in a “body-mind” union, and these are co-creative or “tetra-enactive”). This level also includes a deep understanding of the communion of all being , the fundamental “we-ness” of every “I-ness” in existence, and the mutually interwoven nature of all sentient beings everywhere (in a holographic and holarchical fashion—“all in all, but some more ‘all’ than others” and not merely a holographic fashion—“all in all,” which in itself doesn’t include levels or waves and is deeply “flatland”). Identity itself includes a “gross body-mind dropped!” and a shift into at least a partially transpersonal sense of self (which marks all 3 rd tier levels), moving quite beyond the personal organism and into transcendental systems and mutual networks of being (a beginning Kosmocentric identity). Spirituality can, especially if conjoined with gross-realm reality, be open to forms of Nature mysticism or gross-unity mysticism. The individual feels directly one with—or at least deeply interwoven with—a gross-dimension, a Gaia-embedded multiplex, a sense of a flowing and fluid and interconnected self. Because it has objectified (transcended) most gross-oriented thinking, indigo has a clear understanding of the tenuous, hypothetical, even “arbitrary” nature of most of our theoretical models and pragmatic maps, and how what we “perceive” is deeply interwoven with what we “conceive”—so that all are to be held lightly. At the same time, a perceived or seen Wholeness dominates awareness, along with the beginning of an “awareness of awareness.” discloses extensive tracks of felt Wholeness . This “transpersonal feeling” component is an important development given the increasing proportion of “heavenly” material compared to “earthly” material in 3 rd tier—the “feeling” aspect anchors heavenly to earthly. Spirituality can tend toward something similar to forms of Deity mysticism (even if only a “union/identity with Light” or “Luminous Being”), more so if conjoined with the subtle state (home of Deity mysticism’s deep features; also home of the state self-sense known as “soul,” a subtle orientation that fits perfectly with the Visionary modes of this structure-stage and is easily incorporated/integrated with it). **Summary shadow :** Every transformation in every stage of evolution (or growth and development, in both structures and in states) occurs via a series of operations that have several subphases (dis-identification with the lower; identification with the higher; integration of both). In human consciousness development, for example, whether looking at a fulcrum of structure development or a switch-point of state development, there is a fundamental three-step process: 1. the self (or consciousness) starts out identified with a particular stage (structure or state), and step 1 is to differentiate from, or dis-identify with , that stage (thus also letting go of the View/Vantage Point from that stage). 2. The self then moves up to the next higher stage and identifies with it (step 2), thus generating a new self-identity and a new View/Vantage Point of the world. 3. It then integrates (step 3) the previous structure-rung (or state-realm, not the View or Vantage Point, which has been let go of) with overall consciousness at the new stage (which itself has the new View/Vantage Point). The previous structure-rung or state-realm is included; the previous View or Vantage Point is let go of. Something can go wrong at any of those subphases, and when it does, a specific type of dysfunction or pathology results. The point is simple: any step can break down. In particular, if the self fails to differentiate from, or adequately dis-identity with, the previous stage, then it will remain identified (or fused) with aspects of that stage, thus developing a fixation to them—and hence, will develop an addiction to a grasping of, seeking for, desiring of—those aspects. If, on the other hand, the differentiation goes too far into dissociation, and the dis-identification swings into active dis-owning, then the self will develop an avoidance of various aspects of the previous stage, thus developing an allergy to them. Thus, transcend and include, negate and preserve (the basic rungs are included and preserved, with no conflict at all; the Views are negated and transcended, since they conflict). The you can’t see the world from both the third rung of a ladder and the fourth rung of a ladder simultaneously, even though all the rungs themselves are present simultaneously. Likewise, as orange altitude emerges and the self begins to move toward identifying with that, the basic rungs are easily integrated (formal operational actually operates, we saw, on concrete operational), but the View from orange, which is highly individualistic, autonomous, self-authoring, self-criticizing, doesn’t fit at all with the View from amber—conformist, other controlled, heteronomous, communal driven. And likewise with the basic rungs and Views of green pluralistic and orange rational (whose Views are, respectively, relativistic versus universal, communal versus individual, no metanarratives versus metanarratives, and so on); and of 2 nd tier Integral and green pluralistic (whose Views are, respectively, significant Big Pictures versus no big pictures at all; numerous metanarratives versus no metanarratives at all; universal contexts versus only local contexts, and so forth); and similarly with, as I said, virtually **every developmental level (rungs are incorporated, Views are rejected).** **This is why it’s so important to understand the difference between ladder/enduring rungs and temporary/transitional Views (something that most developmental models, such as Spiral Dynamics, don’t do**). The central point here is that, at each level of development, the elements that arise specifically at that level itself are the elements that can become the shadow at that level . For orange, it’s worldcentric emotions and traits; for green, it’s multiplistic elements; for 2 nd tier, it’s whole/parts. **Best practices for shadows :** **In regard to all of these practices, I recommend keeping a journal. Here, you can keep track of dreams, various 3-2-1 and 3-2-1-0 exercises, each day’s three-page “Daily Entry,” practices of gratefulness and “Three Positive Things,” forgiveness and “One Thing a Day” and “One Thing Each Yesterday,” types of meditation practices and their unfolding experiences and insights, and general aspects from all the modules in an overall AQAL or Integral Life Practice.** **This journaling process can end up being one of the most powerful and effective growth and development tools you will ever use, powerfully helping subject to become object and thus accelerating the very process of development and evolution.** Lastly, in regard to “Cleaning Up,” it is not necessary that an Integral Spirituality include an exhaustively in-depth approach to every single issue included in psychotherapy, in all its central various shadows (levels of subpersonalities correlated with levels of Views and Vantage Points) and an openness to be engaged in shadow work where necessary is generally plenty. A simple realization that the View, or Vantage Point, at any stage can exist in a healthy or unhealthy, functional or dysfunctional, fashion and that its unhealthy/dysfunctional version generates an addiction or an allergy revolving around that particular View—food, sex, power, love and belongingness, self-esteem and achievement, self-actualization and sensitivity, wholeness and integral drives, transpersonal and explicitly spiritual issues, and so forth—as well as shadow issues with each of the major states, is generally enough, when combined with simple exercises such as the 3-2-1 or 3-2-1-0 process. Individuals with significant or serious shadow issues can consult the appropriate specialist. It suffices generally to recognize the existence of shadow material and know how to spot it when and if it emerges—and to know simple practices for treating it, at least in an introductory fashion—and to begin establishing a network of the more integrally oriented professionals to work with individuals where necessary. **To put this all in perspective: Human beings didn’t realize that they had evolved until around two hundred years ago.** **Likewise, they didn’t learn that things could break down at every evolutionary step until shortly thereafter.** Structures of consciousness weren’t identified until around one hundred years ago. Yet most Great Traditions and systems of meditation are now at least a thousand years old—none of them had access to any of this information, and therefore lacked the opportunity to include these more recent discoveries in their approaches.  Only with the discovery of evolution and the understanding that Spirit-in-action itself continues to unfold—producing new realities, new emergents, new truths, and new worlds entirely—does it become apparent that, not only a new Fourth Turning but ongoing future Turnings down the road are things that each and every spiritual system needs to recognize. Spirit-in-action is evolution, and neither one of them ever stops. **The 4 Quadrants :** The quadrants are four perspectives and dimensions that all phenomena possess. You can look at any thing or event from both the interior and the exterior, and in both individual and collective forms. This gives us four major combinations —the interior of the individual; the exterior of the individual; the interior of the group or collective; and the exterior of the group or collective. These four dimensions/perspectives turn out to be incredibly important, because every phenomena in existence has these four orientations, and each of them gives unbelievably significant information. They each have very different but equally real truths, different validity claims, different types of phenomena or qualities or existent realities, and different approaches or methods for accessing them—and leaving out any one of them leaves a gaping hole in the universe. Entire disciplines—medicine, spirituality, law, art, business, politics, organizational development, family systems, relationships, work, ecology—each have these 4 quadrants, without exception, and yet all four are rarely realized and included in any given approach, which automatically guarantees a partial, fragmented, broken, limited, patchy, splintered, disintegrated, prejudiced, and biased result—and these are everywhere! To very briefly review, the 4 quadrants are : - the interior of the individual: the “I” space, which is accessed by introspection and meditation, and contains thoughts, images, ideas, feelings, insights, emotions, satori, and the repressed submergent and emergent unconscious; this Upper Left quadrant includes structures and states of consciousness, as well as shadow material - the exterior of the individual: the “it” space, which is seen objectively by observation—a typical “scientific” view of the organism, which, in humans, contains atoms, molecules, cells, organ systems, lungs, kidneys, a triune brain with neurotransmitters, and so forth, plus the individual as seen from an “objective” or “exterior” view; for example, a fern, tree, frog, ape, and so forth, along with the individual’s objective behavior, all in their singular, individual, objective forms) - the interior of the collective: the “we” space, which contains shared values, ethics, worldviews, meanings, semantics, mutual resonance, and so forth - the exterior of the collective: the “its” space—systems and collective structures, social institutions, family structures, organizations, environmental surroundings and ecological systems, techno-economic modes of production—foraging, farming, industrial, informational, and so on; the elements in the Lower Right quadrant are often referred to by sociologists as **PESTLE—political, economic, social, technological, legal, environmental** Integral Theory often reduces these four major dimension-perspectives to three, combining the two exterior realms into one major objective or 3 rd person realm of “it,” with “you/we” being 2 nd person and “I” being 1 st person, giving us the “Big 3” of I, we, and it (or self, culture, and nature; or 1 st , 2 nd , and 3 rd person perspectives; or art, morals, and science; or Buddha, Sangha, and Dharma). Clearly, all three have been recognized for thousands of years; all three are equally and incredibly important; and rarely are all three included in any approach, sadly.  ![[IMG_0021.png]] ![[IMG_0023.png]]   **Typologies** : Typologies , from the simple, such as masculine/feminine, to the more complex, such as the Myers-Briggs or the Enneagram, are classification schemes that consist of characteristics that essentially remain the same throughout structure development and state development. If you are a five on the Enneagram, for example, you tend to remain a five at archaic, magic, mythic, rational, pluralistic, and integral. As for the Enneagram, it is a sophisticated typology consisting of nine basic types, numbered from 1 to 9, whose names describe them well: (1) the perfectionist, (2) the giver, (3) the performer, (4) the romantic, (5) the observer, (6) the questioner, (7) the epicure, (8) the protector, and (9) the mediator. **Polarity Therapy:** The balancing point of Shallow Polarity is some finite activity or quality that unites and synthesizes the two relative poles being considered, such as thinking versus doing is united in “types of activity”; stability versus change is united in “approaches to variation”; horizontal versus vertical is brought together in “general directions”; knower versus learner is united in “approaches to evidence”; consistent versus adaptable is brought together in “responses to challenges”; and so on. Uniting the relative poles explicitly or implicitly introduces you to a higher, broader, wider class of phenomena—an expansion of relative awareness and an increase in relative embrace (not to mention an actual expansion of one’s skill set). But the balancing point of Deep Polarity is Big Mind itself—either the pure Witnessing of the total Painting of All That Is, or the even deeper “headless” unity state with the entire Painting Itself. Both of those stances are free of every (or in the case of the Witness, virtually every) possible duality and polarity in existence.  When you are aware of, and hold on to, a particular positive pole, such as life, or truth, or the good, you then bring up its opposite and hold it in mind as well, such as death, falsehood, and evil. Then you hold both these deeply positive and deeply negative poles in mind, side by side, and see both of them as equal and important aspects of the Total Painting of Manifestation. These opposites are the light and shade without which the Painting itself couldn’t be seen at all (“life” would have no meaning if there wasn’t also something called “death”; “truth” would have no meaning at all if “falsehood” didn’t also exist; “health” makes no sense whatsoever without “illness”). The seemingly “bad” parts of all dualities (death, pain, illness, falsity, badness) are actually the dark shades and shadows without which the Painting of Life itself—and all its good positives—all good, all light, all pleasure, all satisfaction, all lovable—would be no Painting at all, but something like the North Pole in the midst of a blanketing snowfall: a white background blur stretching featurelessly in all directions.  The manifest universe is a universe of opposites, of dualities, of polarities; we can no more actually separate and isolate their poles than we can get all ups and no downs, all ins and no outs, all lefts and no rights gathered together in one spot. Can’t be done. What can be done is to drop not just the negative pole, while chasing and desiring the positive, but both poles simultaneously, which opens us to the pure mirror mind of utter equanimity and all-inclusive, all-pervading, all-embracing nondual unity consciousness, a oneness with the Total Painting of everything that is arising in our Field of Awareness right now—everything . **Non dual awareness / attention:** **There is a present, ongoing, spontaneous Awareness , which is taking in everything around it, and then there is attention , which focuses and contracts awareness to specific, isolated things or events, and we tend to track that attention but forget the background ever-present Awareness.** Practice this “everyday nonduality,” this background all-encompassing Awareness, with any particular object or phenomenon arising in your Awareness. Take any big desire or wish that you have—a desire to love your mate, to get that promotion, to achieve a great accomplishment, to be fabulously rich, outrageously famous, inordinately adored—and then hold that desire along with its negative and destroying opposite. Alongside your love of your mate, entertain an equally strong hatred of your mate. Simply imagine the love; then imagine an equal hatred and simply hold that feeling; then place them right next to each other and hold them together—you’ll find that the only way you can do that is to step back into Awareness, drop an identity with both of them, and simply Witness them as equal objects in your Awareness.  You can let these “dual objects” arise either in a pure Witnessing, or Mirror Mind, equanimity—evenly Witnessing them, observing them both with Absolute Subjectivity or the Real Seer or true Witness—or you can hold these “dual objects” in your “headless” unity Field of All Space, where they will both arise as textures, as feelings, of your own Being/Awareness. Either way, you are identified with neither one of them alone (either you are equally dis-identified with both in the Witnessing state, or equally identified with both and the rest of the Total Painting in the “headless” unity state). Either is fine for this exercise, truly; practice whichever one comes more easily to you at this time.  Take another important item in your life, say, your desire to do well at your job, get the promotion, achieve widely recognized success. Then imagine actively not caring for the job or how you do at it, an utter indifference to your work; if pushed into it, an actual loathing. Feel one; then feel the other; then hold them both in your Awareness (either as Witness or as headless unity Field). Do this with at least a half-dozen major and important areas, values, goals, or desires in your life. (Enter these in your journal if you have one.) In each case, rest in the resultant equanimity of the Opening, or Clearing, “free of the pairs,” and feel a nondual Spirit saturate your being. I AMness is “neti, neti”—not this opposite, not that opposite, but the ever-present, All-Pervading, All-Embracing, All-Encompassing Presence—with no looking away, turning away, or moving away. It is a profoundly relaxed, evenly hovering Awareness, which allows every single thing and event to arise just as it is, exactly as it is. **Subtle Energy Dimensions:** Nine Subtle Energy Systems: 1. The meridians are the body’s subtle energy transportation system—a network of some fourteen pathways running throughout the body and connecting all organs and organic systems, as well as all the “acupuncture points” on the body’s surface.  2. The chakras are major energy stations or centers, running up the body’s spine from the root chakra at the base of the spine to the chakra at the crown of the head (and beyond). The chakras particularly organize Kundalini energy, or the subtle energy directly related to spirituality.  3. The aura is an energy shell surrounding the body, composed primarily of prana or bio-energy. Traditionally includes the etheric and astral bands of subtle energy.  4. The electrics is a basic energy grid connecting all subtle energy systems and consisting of what can be described as either the densest of the subtle energies or the subtlest of the physical energies. It’s not a separate system itself—like the meridians or chakras—but the actual “electromagnetic” (or “densest”) part of all the subtle energy systems.  5. The Celtic Weave , like the electrics, is not a system in itself but a part of all subtle energy systems, drawing them all together and allowing transfer of information between them.  6. The basic grid is the foundational grid supporting all of the other subtle energy systems, much like the steel frame on a skyscraper.  7. The five rhythms , more commonly known as the “five elements” (water, wood, fire, earth, and metal) but originally and perhaps most basically refer to (as the literal Chinese translation has it) “five walks” or “five rhythms,” represent five different fundamental patterns that subtle energies can take.  8. The triple warmer is a system of energies that aggressively organizes the body’s energies to fight any invaders.  9. The radiant circuits is, in a sense, the opposite of the triple warmer; it organizes all the body’s energies for positive health, well-being, and cooperation. **Network Sciences**: **Up until recently, the most advanced developments in the systems sciences in the Upper Right and Lower Right quadrants have generally been in what is known as “the complexity sciences.”** **Individuals such as Edgar Morin have pointed to the complexity sciences (including chaos and complexity theories) as being the most “leading edge” developments in these areas. But, starting about ten years ago, even more sophisticated approaches to “systems” have been appearing under the name “network sciences.”** These have made many new and profound additions to our understanding of the interwoven (if still exterior) nature of phenomena.  This, of course, is not to exclude chaos and complexity theories, or social autopoietic (“self-creating”) systems and game theory —any Integral Theory operates on a “transcend and include” basis, and so those theories would be included in any Integral understanding of the Right-hand quadrants. But network sciences take a fresh and profound look at the very nature of complex systems, nexus-agencies, and mass-energy- information interconnections.  Network sciences are a centrally important component of any genuine Integral Metatheory.  In Integral Metatheory, the way complex systems and networks work is that, during tetra-evolution, various types of (for lack of a better name) “morphogenetic networks” tetra-evolve and are laid down as Kosmic habits or Kosmic grooves (if these can be said to be “stored” anywhere, it would be in the causal storehouse consciousness).  “Interobjective” (collective exterior) networks particularly represent the Lower Right quadrant and exert their influence, as a Kosmic habit, via that quadrant in any holon. During tetra-evolution, network patterns emerge, based on forces and pressures in all 4 quadrants, and are laid down as Kosmic habits, Kosmic grooves, or Kosmic memories. These Kosmic network morphogenetic patterns move, via downward causation during each moment-to-moment involutionary movement, from causal into subtle and then gross realms, and hence govern and shape the form, structure, and pattern of each and every manifest phenomenon.  **As Rupert Sheldrake has consistently (and very rationally) continued to point out, the one item that conventional science has been so very bad at explaining is the form, pattern, or structure of manifest things and events. A long protein molecule, for example, can fold into literally thousands of different forms, and yet, once it folds into one form, all subsequent protein molecules of that type everywhere in the world will fold into the identical form.** **Where on earth is that network pattern carried? For Integral Theory, it is a Kosmic habit (preserved in the storehouse), and it influences every subsequent protein by a downward involutionary causation each and every moment.** Several different theories, including the older chaos and complexity theories, can be used to help elucidate the concept of an evolutionary/involutionary Kosmic habit (or more generally, help to explain the nature and function of the Lower Right quadrant of “functional fit” in all holons). But we now have an added theory of great sophistication, known generally as the network sciences, which adds a corresponding sophistication to understanding the nature and structure, in particular, of the Right-hand components of these Kosmic habits themselves. This is of primary significance for Integral Theory itself; but, insofar as any Fourth Turning or Integral Spirituality is involved, precisely because it includes the 4 quadrants (as part of its integration of science and religion), new breakthroughs in any of those quadrants have at least a secondary impact on spirituality. The emergence of the network sciences is one such breakthrough. **Evolution** : **My major point is that never, at any time in history, have there been this many fully revolutionary activities occurring in all quadrants all at once.** It is a time the likes of which humanity has simply never, ever , seen. And part of what makes them all so radically unique is the almost equal chance, which I keep putting at around fifty-fifty, that these revolutions could end up spelling either heaven or hell, depending on the quality of consciousness and culture that ends up controlling them, which is a factor almost never taken into account. The main drawback to all of this research (and AI in general) is that it is only investigating states, not also structures. Thus, individuals at egocentric and ethnocentric levels of structure in Growing Up can, in effect, plug into very high transpersonal states of Waking Up very quickly, which they will then interpret through their prejudiced ethnocentric viewpoints. This is not helping in that ethnocentric versus worldcentric race; it is hurting. What we desperately need are AI and machine intelligence researchers investigating the correlations in the Upper Right brain of the major Upper Left structures of consciousness (in other words, working not just with Waking Up but also with Growing Up). This type of feedback would be a profound breakthrough in developmental technologies that actually help get individuals into worldcentric and higher levels of consciousness—which would dramatically help in that specific consciousness race. There is also a small, but steadily increasing, number of consultants who realize the importance of states of consciousness in creative leadership. Otto Scharmer has developed a “U process” that actually draws on a very specific sequence of state capacities: it starts with the gross-realm problem, then moves to more creative subtle-realm ways of viewing it, then rests in causal formless creativity for a solution to arrive, then takes the initial form of the solution and fleshes it out by moving back into the subtle dimension, and then brings it into concrete life back in the gross-physical domain. When I pointed out that he was actually tapping into these states—the “U” in the “U Process” actually reflects that movement from gross to subtle to causal, which is the bottom of the “U,” then back to subtle back to gross—and asked him if he agreed, he replied “100 percent.” The real problem confronting the “We practices” is simply the problem of evolution itself. Evolution has just barely poked its head into 2 nd tier in individuals; of course, any number of individual “I’s” at 2 nd tier will of necessity generate a number of corresponding “We’s” at the same altitude (teal or turquoise, in this case; occasionally higher). But, as a community, we don’t yet know how to reliably transform individuals into 2 nd tier. In fact, transformation is poorly understood in psychology on the whole. We just don’t know exactly what factors consistently produce transformation, and which don’t. Kegan correctly points out that developmental transformation involves “challenge and support”—but exactly what is challenged, and exactly what is supported? Psychoanalytic theories have always maintained that transformation involves “selective frustration”—but again, exactly what is frustrated (and what isn’t)? Margaret Mahler after watching infant and child development as closely as anybody in history, finally gave up trying to spot what helped produce highly developed individuals and concluded, “The lion’s share of development rests with the infant.” Parents who seemingly did everything wrong could still produce healthy and happy children; and parents who seemingly did everything right could produce mean-spirited little wretches. It was mostly up to the infant himself or herself—hence, “the lion’s share of development rests with the infant.” This is generally not what the average liberal parent or educator wants to hear, fervent believers that they are that they can actually do things that will help growth, learning, and transformation. But evolution moves as it does. Michael Murphy reminds us that evolution “meanders more than it progresses,” and the same is true of the general Integral stages of evolution themselves—and in every quadrant (I, We, It, and Its).   Again, not much more than 5 percent of the population is today at Integral levels, and that population has not yet learned to self-identify as being at Integral (that is, most of the people at Integral stages don’t know they are at those stages). So the fact that “We practices” can wander over all the areas pointed out by Tom Murray is not only understandable, it’s desirable. We are learning how to address all of those areas—from feelings to shared meanings to state experiences to collective action—from Integral perspectives, and there are as yet no guide books here at all. **All we can be assured of is that Eros will continue its unrelenting pressure to transform in all 4 quadrants, and human beings will respond to that drive, come what may. Evolution, like so many learning processes, operates through trial and error—and so, across the Integral board, we are seeing many trials, many errors, and a slow, inexorable growth to greater Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.** Semiotics is a matter of emancipation. By naming and signifying the higher structures and states, it opens the doorway to our own growth and development into those states; it gives the mind permission to begin thinking in those directions; it reassures us that those realities are indeed really there. And to repeat, of course we don’t want to confuse words or maps with the real territory—but we also don’t want maps that leave out huge sections of the real territory, so that we don’t even suspect they exist. Get a complete map first—and then let it go for your direct experience of that territory! **Hegel: “Each level is adequate; each higher level is more adequate”** **Every time you think an Integral thought, every time you read or write an Integral sentence, every time an Integral feeling runs through your body, every single time, you are building internal Integral objects that literally are being stored in the real Kosmos; and one day they will have such force that they, too, will reach down from their storage area and pound the sensorimotor world into submission**. And that will be directly because of those thoughts that you had, those ideas that ran across your mind, those feelings that made your heart beat a little faster. Progress? Progress!!! You are engaged in one of the most monumentally progressive movements that has ever been seen in history. The very activity in your consciousness is building internal objects and ontologically real phenomena of an Integral nature that literally are being stored in the real Kosmos and that will one day reach down and bring men and women to their knees with joy and gratitude and grace and awe, will rewrite history as we know it, and will shape the world with a greater Truth and Goodness and Beauty than has ever been conceived or seen or known. Divine Emptiness and Historical Fullness : while Emptiness has not changed since the Big Bang (or before), Form and Fullness have definitely changed, as the universe continued to evolve into more and more complex Forms, hence becoming Fuller and Fuller. Thus, a new Freedom in Waking Up; a new Fullness in Growing Up; a new Flourishing in Cleaning Up; and a new Fully Functioning in Showing Up—this is the astonishing face of a new Spirit headed in our direction with unstoppable fury. For this, indeed, we need a new language, a new vocabulary, a new inclusive view for the new man and new woman—in many ways, the superman and superwoman—powered by a supermind whose brain is directly plugged into the total technological infrastructure of the entire planet (not to mention Spirit itself!), uniting the Right-hand technological realities with the Left-hand consciousness and culture realities, resurrecting a Being that is Becoming while riding the very edge of a ray of light traveling at the limit of velocity itself, racing to a rendezvous with a tomorrow the likes of which has never even been imagined anywhere on this earth. Rest in both the timeless Being of your ever-present Self and the raging urgency of evolution’s unfolding Eros as it races through the world of Becoming, recognizing that your Being and Becoming, your Emptiness and Form, your Eternal Thusness and your temporal Eros, is Spirit’s own way of continuing to realize more and more of its own true Self and real Condition in and through the only vehicle it could ever use to do so: You .